American Printer: July, 2010
Tagline: " Regional Wisconsin printer uncovers new business in 30% of their customers by automating their customer feedback process."

Company background
The Print Shop of Wisconsin Rapids, WI, is a full service regional printer. The business is owned by Warren Miller and competes with twelve local printers serving the Central Wisconsin population of 75,000 in Wisconsin Rapids, Stevens Point, and the surrounding area.

The problem: Where to grow in a small, struggling economy with fierce competition.
The region was hit hard in 2008 when the two local paper companies were sold, resulting in the closure of one mill and downsizing of the other, and the loss of more than 1,000 jobs. As a double bruiser, one of those companies was The Print Shop’s largest customer. The region is trying to diversify into high technology industries, but nothing has filled the unemployment gap as of May, 2010.
In 2008 Warren tried competing with online printers, but as he concluded "Going head to head with the on-line printers was impossible with our business model. The prices were rock bottom, yet we learned and are adapting." He added, "I remember in high school when offset hit the scene and watching those who stuck with "letter presses" put themselves out of business. Digital is here to stay and we are embracing digital printing to service the local area and provide value-added services."
He had considered website development and graphic design services, but knew that website development was done by many free lancers. He expanded into graphic design as a growth area that complemented print and has a very talented person on staff who has helped him add in this area. While it was inevitable that volumes would go down during the recession, he wanted to leverage technology to benchmark performance, stay close to his customers, and make sure he optimizes opportunities with existing customers. With hundreds of customers it is hard to stay connected with all customers all the time no matter how hard staff tries.

The solution: The Print Shop automates customer feedback and lead generation by leveraging Printers Software™, their business management software.
In April, 2009 Warren brought in Howie Fenton, NAPL’s senior print consultant to help him adapt the business for the future. Howie recommended setting up a continuous customer feedback process to insure a strong foundation to retain customers and preserve revenues as competition scrambled to address the weak economy. An ongoing survey solution would keep communication lines open in a proactive way while not adding another responsibility to Warren’s team. The goal was to survey customers after completing jobs while managing survey frequency to repeat buyers to avoid survey burn-out and dropping response rates. Measuring customer loyalty and job performance on a regular basis was a desire of Warren’s, yet finding a low cost, easy to administer process was not in clear view. Warren added "We tried do-it-yourself online survey tools, but it was time consuming and challenging to create and manage the process." Another approach was to leverage their business management system from Printers Software Inc., a software company out of Sarasota, FL. All order information, including the buyer’s email address, is in the software’s database. Printers Software offers an automated shipment reporting process that takes less than 3 minutes each month to run. It was perfect. The survey process includes alerting Warren if a customer’s loyalty is slipping and delivering leads by uncovering printing services bought from competition. In addition, to address survey burn-out, the process is set up so no customer is surveyed more often than every 90 days.

The results: The feedback reveals strong loyalty and opportunities to close new business. Two referrals turn into new accounts.
The Print Shop does a great job responding to customer needs. 98% of their customers are very likely to recommend them to others. This is amazing when compared to the industry average 78% based on tens of thousands of print buyer surveys collected annually by Survey Advantage. This customer comment sums it up nicely, "Am so pleased with all the staff and service from The Print Shop - you are over and above all others in my opinion. I recommend you to others all the time". Still, Warren received a few negative comments, but now was able to react quickly to preserve the business and loyalty before small problems became big ones. He achieves a 46% response rates on a continuous basis attributing the high response rates to their high loyalty scores and frequency management. Over half of those responded were buying wide format somewhere else, yet were interested in learning more, and did not know they offered the service. About 10% have shared referrals, and while the formal referral program is still new, one referral resulted in $1,500 a year and another about $3,000 a year. For a printer in a difficult economy these are solid first steps in rebuilding the customer and prospect database. With this system in place, they are positioned well to know if something is getting out of tune and, more important, reacting quickly to preserve business and loyalty. The Print Shop pays $49/month for this fully managed feedback service. According to Howie, "NAPL has been working hard on new strategies to help companies like Warren’s adapt to changing business requirements. I am thrilled that the process is achieving such a high payback."
Take-a-ways:
· Leverage your estimating and production system to implement an effective feedback process.
· You probably already have the tools in-house to automate the process.
· A well designed surveying process yields selling opportunities with existing customers and complements selling efforts.
· Monitor your customer loyalty to ensure you are positioned to expand in existing accounts and drive that referral engine.
· Don’t take your customers for granted or assume they know all you do.
· Managing survey frequency to repeat buyers drives ongoing participation.
I checked in with Warren in late May and it was great to hear he was going nuts with an uptick in proposals, and the flow of orders was at a solid pace. He was very busy again.